Monday, June 25, 2012

The life raft has gone in for a service, the stainless steel has gone on to hold the headsail in place – that, we had to get done twice. The first stainless man didn’t do it in thick enough stainless and charged us 80RM but the second stainless man did a great job with thick stainless and charged us 20RM! The bimini has been repaired and new clears put in, forward navigation lights rewired, the winches have been serviced, the alignment of the prop shaft has been refigured and the engine has been serviced. The oil pressure sender unit has been put in and our CAIT paperwork to allow us to go through Indonesia has arrived. And we finally took our cushions up to the canvas man and hopefully they will be back some time this week looking either a million dollars or really really bad – it was a bold choice of cover!!! But it hasn’t all been hard work – last Sunday Cilantro called us around 4pm and said they were out the back of the market with a lot of local people drinking beer at 4 cans for 10RM ($3.33) so of course we joined them and had a good session. There are also lots of little eateries there. James spent some time “talking” to the deaf and mute men at the next table and we met a man who had come in with his mate to get something to take home for dinner as it was father’s day – of course there was a bit of beer involved in that!! We then adjourned to the Indian restaurant for some tandoori chicken and naan bread. Braveheart arrived at the marina with their daughter Trish on board and Bach & Byte turned up with Russel on board which was a real surprise. The marina is really filling up and the main fleet from the Sail Malaysia rally hasn’t turned up yet. It has been incredibly hot so a few days were spent in the shopping centre in the air conditioning! A lot of people have air conditioning on their boats so it is funny you don’t see many people but around 5pm all these little heads start peeping up out of the boats! Our little grand daughter Charlie turned 2 on 13th July – HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHARLIE! We also had dinner on board Second Wind with Brian cooking up a storm – a lovely night. Braveheart have headed off on a flight to Kuala Lumpar to follow their noses (or ipad) to wherever they can find. Apart from that there is not a lot of news – just usual marina life and we still have things to do yet. Meanwhile we hope you are all well and if you aren’t then we hope you are recovering. Special love to Maureen and Ruth. And thanks to Rosie for her email!!!
Cheers and Beers and love to all
Dell and Peter

Friday, June 22, 2012

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Happy Birthday to Bill
Happy 60th to Judy
Well two weeks has flown by. The crew has finally finished washing every “wall” and all of the boat interior and it now looks as though clean people live there!!!! We have spent our time working on the boat, shopping, eating out and on Friday nights sundowners with all the marina crews. We had a huge windstorm (gusting 40 knots) last week at 5am and again this morning and its still blowing. I had patched our shade cover after the last storm but the skipper wasn’t keen to take it down this morning and it tore – so down it came. The skipper had been keen to put a new one up (we have spares) so that could have had something to do with it!!! We have discovered big mangos – they are the size of a pawpaw and its unbelievable how many different kinds of bananas there are. We found some last week we have never seen before – like little pregnant ones – very unusual but they all taste like bananas except the smaller ones are a little sweeter. We ride our bikes to the edge of town and leave them locked up there. We have applied for our CAIT which will allow us to take the boat through Indonesia – we should have it by around 14th July all going well. The skipper has had the sewing machine out making covers for the new water jerries we bought in the Philippines. We have been trying to get the canvas man to come down to look at our cushions but so far he hasn’t turned up. The skipper was talking at the front of our boat the other day and the other skipper noticed a stress fracture in the stainless which holds the forward head sail stay. How lucky was that so our skipper has designed a stronger one and it is currently being made by the stainless man – we will pick it up on Monday. The anchor has gone off to get galvanised. We are waiting to see how others anchor chains come back before we decide to get ours done. The skipper has got out 100 metres of rope and the other anchor so we can anchor in deep water if we have to. Cilantro had a fright the other night. James woke to a furry thing against his face and being licked! He knew it wasn’t Sandra so they jumped up and there was a black and white cat in their bed!! At least it wasn’t a rat! Anyway thats about it for now.

Would love to hear from Rosie. And all our love to Winston and Maureen. And we hope the Tasmanians haven’t turned to ice!!

Dell, Peter & Pacific Express

About Us and Our Boat

Pacific Express is a 38 foot steel Ganley Timerider sloop with a 1.8m draft built in New Zealand in 1987. We purchased her Christmas 2004. We have completed the 2009 Indonesian Rally and cruised Thailand. In 2011 we joined the Sail Malaysia to the East rally and saw Borneo and Brunei. 2012 we have circumnavigated Palawan in the Philippines. We have included our anchorages for the Australian coast 2008 & 2009 and our Indonesian and Malaysian anchorages with lats and longs - they appear in the January 2010 entries. We arrived back at Newport Marina, Brisbane on 9th December 2012.